0451472004 by Stephanie Thornton

Author:Stephanie Thornton [Thornton, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-03T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

327 BCE

Sogdiana, Persia

Roxana

The sharp winds yanked my hair from my veil and I mused anew how my body might shatter on the rocks below the citadel’s precipice. Some months ago I had almost fulfilled the daydream, freshly broken as I’d been by the lonely soldiers who knew Bessus no longer protected me. I’d even invoked my father’s name, but Ariamazes, our new commander, who had ogled my breasts when meeting with Bessus, had only laughed at my suggestion that Oxyartes would avenge my honor.

“Oxyartes of Balkh?” he sputtered. “A few coins would have him singing a different song. After all, he allowed you to whore for Bessus, didn’t he?”

Ariamazes had been the first, but he was a fair and popular general who allowed his men their turns as well. I’d tried to fight in the beginning; I’d slapped one soldier, spat at another, and kneed a third in his stones. I screamed that I wasn’t a common camp follower looking to hike her skirts up for any man with a hard shaft between his legs, but it didn’t matter.

I’d had two choices after that night: to fling myself from the rock walls or to use my one gift—my beauty—to shape my life into something I wanted.

Now I no longer fought Ariamazes and his men, but instead wheedled from them bags of dried dates, wine, and the rings and silk scarves they’d been given by wives and lovers back home, in return for my pleasuring them as Bagoas had taught me. I’d become the Whore of Sogdian Rock, but I’d been a whore since I first spread my legs for Bessus, so what did it matter?

I took solace in the knowledge that Bessus’ first two wives had been killed in Alexander’s burning of Persepolis. The last remained here, still fat and jowly but more often ignored now that she’d never wear the queen’s diadem.

I knew this wretched wasteland in every season, its scalding summer heat and screaming winter blizzards, the way the stark cliffs below us changed from wheat gold in the spring to mud brown as the shadows of the tamarisk shrubs stretched longer until finally snow blanketed the mountain peaks. I knew that the long-nosed niece of Ariamazes tumbled a flat-faced soldier behind the henhouses each night. I also knew that we received only sporadic provisions now that the stream of traveling merchants had decided the promise of bored, rich widows wasn’t worth confronting the might of Alexander’s army. Sogdian Rock had grain stockpiles to last two years, but the earth of the citadel’s root gardens had grown barren with winter’s snows, the clumps of dirt frozen harder than any paving stone.

The sheep and goats grew thinner, as did the rest of us, but a tentative spring had finally arrived, bringing with it the promise of easier living and warmer weather. And an army bent on our destruction.

Alexander had finally come to Sogdian Rock.

Greek mercenaries and Macedonians filled the plain below the fortress in a black sea of death.

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